[John Frederick Lewis] 1860s

This photograph of John Frederick Lewis was made by John and Charles Watkins, likely in their Parliament Street studio during the 1860s. It's an albumen print, a process which was very common for commercial portraiture at the time. The image is created by coating paper with egg white and silver nitrate. The Watkins studio would have produced this by the thousands. Looking at this image, you can see why the albumen process was so popular. It yields an incredible level of detail and a warm sepia tone. Notice the sharp rendering of Lewis’s beard, and the soft glow of the light on his face. What might have been lost by way of intimate artistic touch, was more than gained in the way the image could then be reproduced and distributed. This kind of studio portraiture became a powerful means of social representation. Not only did it democratize image-making, but it also gave prominence to people like Lewis who, by commissioning portraits, solidified their place in the cultural landscape. It is an early example of the power of photography as a tool for shaping identity and solidifying social hierarchies.